


reach out for what remains

by englishsummerrain



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, Dom/sub Undertones, M/M, Post-Break Up, Window Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-28
Updated: 2020-09-28
Packaged: 2021-03-07 21:21:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,619
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26694427
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/englishsummerrain/pseuds/englishsummerrain
Summary: Donghyuck's divorce was finalised three weeks ago. Renjun walked out on Jaemin four months ago.Maybe it doesn't matter.
Relationships: Lee Donghyuck | Haechan/Na Jaemin
Comments: 20
Kudos: 143





	reach out for what remains

The fingers in his mouth have a tan line on the ring finger. Freshly removed, a ghost against warm skin. They’re smooth and scented with lotion — no doubt something expensive, something Jaemin will never be able to afford. 

Donghyuck’s entire house is like that — dripping with plush luxury. Walls of abstract art and sleek white surfaces, rugs so soft his knees sink into them like putty. There’s clothes all over the carpet and outside the floor-to-ceiling windows the rain falls against a grey vista of the city, tumbling down to a churning river choked with corporate greed and dead dreams.

“Posture,” Donghyuck says. Jaemin straightens up on instinct, shoulders tightening, thighs straining as he tries to correct his position — flattening out his spine and opening his mouth a little wider. He lets out a soft whine as Donghyuck’s other hand cups his jaw, deepening into a moan as his fingers press against his tongue. “You look nice.”

Donghyuck’s divorce from Jeno was finalised three weeks ago. Jaemin doesn’t know why Donghyuck had only stopped wearing his ring then, considering that they’d been living separately for almost six months. Maybe it was something symbolic. A final goodbye to someone he still loved. Maybe it was a sign that Donghyuck was still holding on.

Then again, maybe it doesn’t fucking matter. Jaemin doesn't want his heart. He wants his body. He wants his dick. He wants the grit in his voice when he pushes Jaemin onto the bed and tells him to put his hands above his head. The silk of his tie as he wraps it around his wrists, deft fingers pressed against his pulse point.

Donghyuck doesn't need to love him to do this. He only needs to be willing — and he is. He’s three fingers deep in Jaemin’s ass — and that should really be all he cares about. His cock drools against his stomach, spitting fluid with every press of his fingers against his prostate, and it should be enough for Jaemin to forget. To let it all wash out, a great roar in his ears. Thrown into the river, only to float to the surface as someone else. He lets out a choked sob, legs quivering, biting his tongue as he tries not to beg for Donghyuck to touch him.

It shouldn’t fucking matter. It shouldn’t fucking matter. There’s a gaping wound in Jaemin’s chest, and this should be enough to fill it. Both their lives are falling apart, but this should be enough to hold it together. Donghyuck draws his nails down the outline of Jaemin’s abs, pressing his fingertips into the fluid pooled between the ridges just as his cock gives another spurt, white hot pleasure coursing through him. 

It should be enough for him to give himself up like this. To feel like even if his life is wildly spinning out of control — even if four months ago Renjun had walked out of the door — that at least he can find something steady here. Some kind of bitterness flooding his throat, at odds with the sparks that dance across his skin, the pounding lust in his gut as Donghyuck’s fingers twist inside of him again. 

At least he can find control in losing it again.

“Donghyuck,” he sobs, and Donghyuck’s nails score at his skin, veering dangerously close to his aching cock as Jaemin twitches and bucks his hips upwards, desperate for friction. “Please.”

There’s wet tears in his throat, every part of him on edge, his entire body feeling like the string of a violin vibrating at impossible frequency. 

“I need you,” Jaemin says, and it’s so close to his heart he thinks he might break — spill open and bleed out all over his sheets.

What a mess that would be. Cleaning up not one but two broken hearts — because Donghyuck is still cut apart. Jeno’s absence is like someone had taken a kitchen knife and severed him in two. Scooped his insides clean out and left him a husk.

“It’s okay,” Donghyuck says. Another searing bolt of pleasure, Jaemin’s entire self pulled apart. 

His hands are still bound when Donghyuck lifts him into his lap, helping him loop his arms around to rest on his shoulders. His cock slides into him easily, and Jaemin gasps, leaning his sweat slick forehead against his shoulder, rocking back against him as Donghyuck lifts him up to better readjust.

It’s good. It’s what he needs. The heat of a body against his, fingers digging into his muscles. Feeling Donghyuck shift inside of him, feeling the drag of his cock as he starts to move in slow strokes. The sound of his breath. Pleasure arcing across Jaemin’s body, a will to let his mind go blank. 

It was never like this with Renjun.

Just the thought of his name is enough to make something wet bite at the back of Jaemin’s throat, and he forces it back down, a real fear that everything might fall apart in the second. 

“Please,” Jaemin says. It’s a sob. He needs this. He needs it so fucking badly. “Please Donghyuck. Fuck me, please.”

_Make it hurt,_ sits on the tip of his tongue, and Jaemin wishes he could say it. He wishes Donghyuck didn’t hold him like he was drowning — didn’t cling to him like he was a telephone pole amongst rising floods. The water tickles at his toes, and Jaemin wants more. He wants to be taken away in the typhoon, hear the thunder break overhead and the lightning split the sky.

He thinks that if Donghyuck fucks him hard enough he might be happy for a second. 

But that’s not how this works. It’s never how it works. Donghyuck clings to him and he’s wet with sweat and his fingers are slick with lube and Jaemin’s eyes prick with tears and he lets Donghyuck use him — rocks back in time with his thrusts, long moans ripped from his throat. Held in his arms, the two of them wrapped up in this ball of light, the whole world grey around them. Autumn rainstorms and a city full of broken hearts, dead bodies on the sidewalks and dirty rubbish leaking blood. Jaemin falls apart and he begs for Donghyuck to fuck him through it — to keep going, white hot pain cutting at his nerves.

He doesn’t beg for what comes afterwards, but it’s given anyway. An implicit promise.

_Let me take care of you. I couldn’t take care of him._

What had happened, anyway? Nothing big, nothing great. No infidelity, no blow up. No real reason for Jeno and Donghyuck to fall apart — just a realisation, one day, that maybe they weren’t made for each other. 

That Jeno had grown out of him.

Had Renjun grown out of Jaemin, too?

  
  
  
  
  


Donghyuck’s bathroom is huge — all grey tile and white porcelain. Steam floats up around him as he stands naked in front of Donghyuck, and the air is filled with the scents of various soaps that Donghyuck works into his aching skin. He washes it off with the swipe of his hands, tracing the shape of Jaemin's muscles with his fingertips. The ridges of his abs, the curve of his pecs. Palm flat against his heart, feeling where it beats like summer rainfall in the sweltering heat.

"Okay?" Donghyuck asks, and Jaemin answers with a press of his mouth to his hand, turning in his arms to press a second kiss to his lips. The water runs down his back and he presses their bodies together and Donghyuck clutches to him, no more words escaping his lips.

When Donghyuck starts to massage shampoo into Jaemin's hair, Jaemin thinks he might collapse. It's unbearably tender, his fingers digging into his scalp, the kind of kindness that seems so basic. 

He doesn’t want this. He doesn’t deserve this — he can’t take it. 

It’s not love, but it’s another human need. Something Jaemin has lacked — that he’d left somewhere in the sheets of someone else’s bed — something he craved like a sunflower craves the sun. 

The simplest of gestures. Donghyuck’s hands on him, wet body curved against his back. He’s speaking to him, but Jaemin isn’t listening. He doesn’t need to hear him — he’s already crying. Suds dripping down his chest, body raw and strung out. He’s lost and lonely, a boat with it’s mooring cut — empty cargo floating in the sea. 

Donghyuck’s hands on his chest, mapping out his muscles. He’s so warm, rivulets of water trapped between his chest and Jaemin’s back. Cleaning him up, wiping him down. Jaemin doesn’t fight as Donghyuck towels him off, wrapping him in a fluffy robe and offering him clothes that aren’t as scuffed up as the ones Jaemin had come in with. 

And then they’re here. And then Jaemin is in bed, and Donghyuck calls in delivery for an early dinner, and they sit on the mattress together, Donghyuck with his head in Jaemin’s lap, Jaemin with his hands in his hair. And then it’s like the fine point of a knife under his skin, chipping into his bones, shrapnel in the matted mess of his veins. He’s empty, and Donghyuck is silent, getting sauce all over the sheets, snuggling into him like a cat.

They don’t talk about it. Jaemin wants to, but he knows he shouldn’t. His hair is damp and the air of the apartment is dry and warm, and when they finish eating they lie down beside each other and Jaemin wraps his arms around Donghyuck and holds him against him, wishing he could crawl inside his ribcage and build a home.

“You know what he said,” Donghyuck says, and it vibrates against him. “He said he was sorry, and sometimes you can do everything right, and it’s still not enough.”

It’s like a spear through the chest. Tears race up his throat and Jaemin bites down on it, fisting Donghyuck’s shirt in his hands and holding him against him. 

What’s the point?

He always told himself he did everything right. He loved Renjun. He loved every part of him — all the chipped lines of gold and silver, all the scars where the world had tried to ruin him. The things that made him beautiful, the fragments that formed a sum of this beautiful boy — Jaemin’s sun. The boy he’d built a life with for years — the only person he could ever imagine loving. It’s like when he left he stole the air from Jaemin’s lungs, and he’s been drowning ever since. 

All the little things that remind Jaemin of him. His clothes were still in the drawers and he’d left his engagement ring on the kitchen bench in an envelope, a final goodbye. A seal on the crumbling dust of Jaemin’s entire life.

How do you rebuild when the person you thought was your forever and ever leaves? How do you pick yourself back up with the tide washes away the foundations you thought were as strong as a mountain?

Renjun hadn’t even given him a chance. He’d told him he was leaving, and then he’d left. He’d asked Jaemin to move on — to get over him. Like he’d known that Jaemin would follow him to the end of the Earth. Like he knew how fiercely Jaemin’s love for him had burned — something that might consume him if he allowed it to.

“I know," Jaemin says. It's all he can offer. Comfort. It's all he can give. The comfort of his body — it's all he has left. Everything else has been squeezed out of him. 

"Love was supposed to be enough." 

"I know." 

His engagement ring is in a perfume box above the sink. Sometimes he holds it in his palm and hopes some part of Renjun can hear him — like it's some kind of two way mirror. Some calling card that leads to his heart. 

Like true love was real, and his might return to him some day if he wanted it to happen enough. 

"You don't have to talk about it if you don't want to," Jaemin says. "It's alright." 

Donghyuck presses his face into his neck, breathing out a wet, shaky breath. "It's not," he says. "But I appreciate you trying." 

  
  
  
  
  


The glass is cold as ice against Jaemin's shoulder blades, digging into his bones and sapping the heat from his skin. His head hits the window with a thud but he doesn't care — the shock of pain is almost welcome, something searing white amongst the crimson tide of lust that floods his senses. 

They'd left the bed eventually. Donghyuck had poured him some expensive liquor Jaemin couldn't pronounce the name of and they'd watched the sunset fall across the city from the vantage point of his couch while they sipped their drinks. Jaemin's hand rested on the inside of Donghyuck's thigh and no words passed between them. Something apocalyptic, a world on fire, everything brilliant red in the frozen air. Jaemin had turned to Donghyuck and seen the wildfire in his eyes, and maybe for the first time in ever he'd felt a spark catch the wet tinder in his throat. 

It ends where it ends. It ends up here, again. Donghyuck fucking him against the window, Jaemin clutching on to him for dear life. There's cum dried on the insides of his thighs and Donghyuck's teeth are at his throat. He almost wishes he'd go further — that he'd bite like a wolf, tear him open.

He's wrung out and dry. Everything is aching, and at his back millions of lives move on in the wink of neon lights. The night is brilliant and clear, the city wearing the half dried sheen of rainwater like a gossamer gown, and Jaemin hates that he still finds it beautiful. He thinks nothing should seem beautiful any more. 

Donghyuck's kisses are soft as petals. Jaemin digs his nails into his back and bites at his bottom lip and his head tips forward, allowing Donghyuck to press their mouths together. A paradox. A wrong note in a concerto. 

"You can't," Jaemin says, against him, gasping as Donghyuck thrusts into him. "You can't do this." 

"Do what?" 

"Treat me like this." 

The squeak of his skin on the glass. Jaemin's muscles ache and he clenches around Donghyuck, hissing as he slows his pace, shallow strokes that do little except send ripples of heat through his limbs. 

"Like what?" 

"Like I matter." 

  
  
  
  
  


Donghyuck's cum splatters onto the floor when he pulls out, but he doesn't even clean it up. He just carries Jaemin to bed and wipes him dry. He just kisses him, over and over, swiping his fingers across his skin. He just takes the hilt of the knife and twists it, pushing it deeper, until it goes all the way through, bursting out of Jaemin's back like the bones of a wing he never quite learned how to use. 

It's dark. He still knows what Donghyuck looks like — those beautiful legs, the softness of his face, all the parts of him Jaemin has held his mouth against. He can't erase him, burned across his memory as he is. He can't pretend when he lies next to him that he's Renjun. 

"Do you think it gets better?" Jaemin asks. Donghyuck's hand finds his wrist and he turns his arm so that his palm is facing the ceiling. 

It’s supplication, maybe, though he doesn’t know from who.

"No." The sheets rustle, Donghyuck's skin a blaze against his. The softness of his hair tucked into the crook of his neck, arm over his chest. "But I have to, don't I?" 

Jaemin lets out a shaky breath and rests his free hand across Donghyuck's back. It fits perfectly in the space between his shoulder blades.

**Author's Note:**

> [twitter ](https://twitter.com/dongrenle)and [cc](https://curiouscat.me/goldhorn)


End file.
